If you could bring back classic Mac OS software, what would it be?

[Phipli]

They did release some of their stuff for OS X, but support wasn't maintained and I don't believe they released any 64-bit binaries of their apps? Stuff like Bubble Trouble X can't run on modern macOS since Apple removed support for running 32-bit binaries.

I... Think the / one of the Devs for bubble trouble lived in my town growing up. At least, I was lead to believe based on mutual acquaintances and the names line up and other incidental evidence like they were where lots of the hacked software came from

 

[joshc]

Control Panel (System 6 version)

the modern macOS control panel is a lot closer to this than it's ever been, there's just... a lot more settings these days.

ResEdit, too.

GitHub - andrews05/ResForge: Resource editor for macOS

Resource editor for macOS. Contribute to andrews05/ResForge development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[Juror22]

Snial (WindowShade) and LaPorta (Stable, Unbloated, Simple Mac OS) took both of my wishes!

 

[mikes-macs]

You can play it on modern macOS, see this: https://stratagus.com/

Thanks for the tip. I'll check this out.

People mentioning multi-platform games: most of these it's easier to run them on Windows.

I won't run Windows in my house.

 

[adespoton]

multi-platform games:
Strategic Conquest
NetRisk
NetTrek
Spectre (pretty much all of them)
Bolo

Those are the ones that I'd like to have playable off the top of my head. Of course, most of them already have equivalents or are network playable under emulation.

 

[aladds]

Not quite the same. Today’s macOS is a kludge of useless bloat. I prefer the cleaner OS 9 and below interface.

Haiku is probably the closest modern OS which has the cleanliness of OS 9 yet the stability and feature set we have come to expect. I'd argue it's very nearly usable as a daily OS now, too

 

[VMSZealot]

Well, I'm happy with OpenType fonts today, but I'd really love a built-in font editor again. A real one, that could do splines, kerning, ligatures, etc.
So maybe a Mac version of Fontographer? It used to exist, now Fontographer and FontLab are Windows-only :\

Are you sure about that? FontLab looks like a Mac app to me… https://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/fontlab/

That said, one of the reasons I keep an old Mac(s) (other than because I like them) is that, back in the nineties, I bought a Microtek scanner and it came with a bundle of software. One of those packages was Fontographer. I'm too cheap to buy a new license, so when I design a typeface for some software I'm writing, I do it on my LC475 or SE/30. How many modern Mac and iOS apps can claim to have be partially developed on hardware more than 30 years old!?

See that Segment typeface? Made with Fontographer on 68k! (the game is Innecto Everywhere - not released just yet - and that's the Intel / Silicon macOS version. The 68k version is discussed elsewhere on this forum, and (currently) uses an obscene 64k of memory - is that low enough to run on a 128k Mac I wonder? And, if it is, I wonder if the app built by Think C is compatible with ancient versions of System? I'll keep you posted…)